Lately, I’ve been hanging out with the green-eyed monster.
He’s not cute. He doesn’t pay rent. He shows up when I’m tired, insecure, bored or brave enough to think I’m over it. He’s the voice that whispers, “She’s prettier. She’s easier. She was the right choice.”
And one week after I found out I was cheated on, he decided to make himself at home.
It was just supposed to be dinner.
My dad and I were grabbing food. Something simple, somewhere local. I’d barely had an appetite all week, but I was trying to put myself back together—doing the normal things, going through the motions. I’d even washed my hair, wore mascara and told myself I looked fine.
We walked into the diner. Low lights. Silverware clinking. Cozy in that “locals love it” kind of way. I was still saying something to my dad about the parking when I saw him.
And her.
She had her back to the door. I recognized her from the back of her head, which should tell you how many times I’d seen it on social media, wondering if she knew. Spoiler: she knew.
He saw me instantly. His face turned bright red. Like blood-rushed, caught-in-the-act, I’ve-just-seen-a-ghost red.
And at that moment, I didn’t need to wonder anymore. He chose her.
After telling me, “I’ll let you know if being with her is more important than our friendship.”
Well — guess this way, he doesn’t have to lie.
The one he cheated with. The one he lied to me about. The one who, for weeks, lived in my head rent-free as a question mark I couldn’t silence.
And now, she wasn’t a question anymore. She was the answer.
And now she was here, mid-laugh, sipping something and smiling at him like he hadn’t completely shattered another human to be able to sit across from her.
I didn’t say a word. I just looked at him, then looked at my dad and said, “We need to leave.”
We turned around. Walked right back out. Didn’t sit. Didn’t order. Didn’t let them have the satisfaction of pretending we didn’t exist.
I held it together until I hit the car, and then I fell apart. I cried like it had just happened. Because in a way, it had. Seeing it—them—made it real in a way that screenshots and gut feelings and half-truths couldn’t.
It wasn’t just betrayal. It was humiliation. Not just pain, but replacement.
And the green-eyed monster? Oh, he had a field day.
“She’s what he wanted.” “You weren’t enough.”
“You asked for too much, felt too deeply, loved too hard.” “She’s the reward for not being complicated.”
Comparison is a slow, brutal poison. You know it’s killing you, but you keep sipping anyway. You scroll her feed. You remember how he told you she was “just a friend.” You relive the night you almost asked if something was going on, when he was texting her in your bed, but didn’t—because you didn’t want to seem crazy.
And even when the truth slaps you across the face in a booth at your neighborhood restaurant, part of you still thinks, Maybe if I had been different.
That’s what the green eyed monster does.
It convinces you that someone else’s existence is a reflection of your failure. That your worth lives in someone else’s hands. That healing is a race and you’re dead last.
But here’s the part I’m holding onto—maybe harder than I’ve held onto anything else this year: Look how far I’ve come.
I have survived every version of myself that thought she wasn’t enough. I have dragged myself out of nights where the loneliness made me question everything. I have stopped needing answers from people who never deserved my questions.
We are so quick to measure ourselves against everyone else—especially her. Whoever she is for you. But we forget to pause and measure ourselves against who we used to be. Who we were before the boundary. Before the growth. Before the heartbreak that turned us inside out.
I may not be healed. But I am healing. And that counts.
Envy might be one of the seven deadly sins, but pride is a quieter kind of redemption. Not the loud, ego-driven kind. The quiet kind. The kind that looks like eating breakfast after days of skipping it. The kind that shows up when you tell a friend, “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.” The kind that says, “I miss him, but I’m not going back.”
So yeah—I cried in the car. But then I wiped my face and reminded myself: that moment doesn’t undo everything I’ve built.
Because I didn’t have to crawl into someone else’s relationship to feel wanted. I didn’t have to lie, cheat or sneak around to figure out who I am. I didn’t burn someone else’s heart just to feel warm.
He may have picked her—but I didn’t lose. He just made it easier to walk away.
Because she can have the mess. I have the truth.
And I didn’t have to destroy someone to find me.
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Confessions of a Hot Mess is the personal work of Emily Hess. The opinions expressed in this column, as well as those published in The Nevada Sagebrush, are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Sagebrush or its staff.
